


Lost

by assurancetourix



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Being Lost, Culture Shock, Gen, Help, M/M, being a foreigner in Japan, set during episode 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 14:05:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9238232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/assurancetourix/pseuds/assurancetourix
Summary: Navigating Japan is harder than what Viktor had thought. How in the middle of nowhere, he is rethinking his decision of coming here without any language skills.





	

“Yuuri, what are you doing for Christmas in Japan,” asked Viktor one day they were both relaxing in the onsen after a long day training. They were back in Hasestu after the Grand Prix Final and they were preparing for the Worlds Championship. Yuuri blushed and mumbled something. 

“In Russia, we don’t celebrate Christmas. I mean not the way they do in America, but I feel like celebrating it this year.” Yuuri looked up at his fiancé and nodded. Yuuri stayed silent while Viktor continued, “I have always dreamed of having those big family suppers like in the Christmas movies that are on the television every year, but my family… well, they never wanted.”

“We would only have a week to organize everything, but together we can do it,” replied Yuuri, hugging Viktor, for once initiating the contact. “But inviting your friend from Russia would be hard, there is so little time and the Russian National are only in three weeks.”

“We can Skype with them. They will most likely be at the skating rink anyway.”

They relaxed in the onsen in a comfortable silence for few minutes, before Viktor broke the silence. “There is a girl I’d like to invite. She is the reason I manage to meet you,” said Viktor smiling.

“What?” said Yuuri surprised, looking at Viktor in the eyes. “How?” Some external observers could have taken Yuuri’s reaction as jealousy, but Viktor knew he was genuinely surprised.

“Oh? I never told you? Well, for a foreigner who does not speak Japanese, coming to Hasestu is harder than it looks.”

Yuuri laugh “It could not have been that hard. You made it in the end.”

“Yeah, sure, but not without getting horribly lost.”

.o0o.

Viktor knew he had made a bad decision when for the first time in his life he realized he had no idea what to do. Coming to Japan to coach the cute Japanese skater from the banquet seemed to be a good idea and he had bought the plane ticket without really thinking thing through. However, standing here, in the middle of nowhere, not speaking the language and having nobody to call, Viktor had no idea what to do.

When he had arrived in Fukuoka, he took his luggage to the bus station and had asked a random person on the street how to get to Hasestu. The girl had seemed confused and had pointed to a bus. Viktor had thought that the girl was perplexed by Viktor's presence in Japan or his desire to go to Hasestu, but now with some perspective he could guess that the poor girl had just no idea what Viktor had said and most likely was not pointing to the bus, but the ticket counter. But Viktor was not known for his common sense or his thought-though plans and just jumped on the bus.

Maybe if he was not completely jet-lagged and had not fallen asleep in the bus, Viktor would have realized sooner that he was not going in the right direction at all. However, that did no happen and Viktor was now stranded in a small Japanese town of which he did not know the name and had not idea how to leave. To make matters worse, the night was falling and there was not signs of a hotel he could stay the night.

Suddenly a voice made him jumped. “Are you alright?” asked a girl. ‘English!’, he thought, ‘thanks god’. He turned toward the voice a saw an overweight red-hair girl. He was surprised to see that she was not Japanese.

“Are you lost?” she asked again. Viktor’s voice seemed to have taken a vacation because he was not able to do anything else than nod vigorously. 

“That what I thought. I was kind of wondering what in the world another foreigner would come here, in the middle of nowhere.” She smiled, her round cheeks slightly pink from the cold. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to Hasestu.”

“Hasestu? In Saga? But you are not even in the good prefecture! What are you doing here?” she asked, her eyebrows quite high in surprise.

A wave of despair came over Viktor. His idea of coming to coach Yuuri Katsuki seemed even more stupid than a few minutes earlier. He crouched on the floor near his suitcase. She kneeled next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry everything will be alright.” She looked at her phone and swore under her breath. “Ok, that makes things a bit more complicated. The bridges to get to the mainland are closed because of the strong current and I have no clue when they will open again.”

Viktor looked at her in confusion. “Which bridges are you talking about?” It was her turn to look at him puzzled, “the five bridges between here and the mainland. You did not realize you crossed five bridges?” His silence was the only answer she needed as she started laughing. 

When she got the control of her breathing again, she looked at him, hey eye shining with joy and said “Okay Viktor, there is nothing we can do tonight, but let’s go to my place for now. I have a rest of curry rice in my fridge. I’ll admit it is not as good as fresh curry, but the bridges are closed so we cannot go in town and the only restaurant in this village exclusively serve udon and I hate udon.” 

She was walking off when she realized that he had brusquely stopped. “How do you know my name?” he asked in a strange voice. “You are Viktor Nikiforov, aren’t you? The figure skater?” When he nodded, she continued, “my roommate back home is crazy about figure skating and for the last four years or so she forced me to watch every competition on TV. You’re pretty famous, even here in the middle of nowhere.”

“So you’re a fan,” he smiled.

“Nope,” she said the laugh clear in her voice “I’m more of a hockey person. But I’m Canadian so what can you expect.”

“You’re from Canada? What are you doing here?”

“I’m the English teacher. I teach in the three towns on this island. Every school-age kid here is my student. So, everyone knows me in a way or another.”

This is when Viktor realized that she was smiling and waving to everyone and they were replying in similar manners.

“By the way, I’m Abby. I should have maybe introduced myself before inviting you to my place.” 

“As you know, I’m Viktor. I’m happy to finally know the name of my knight in a shining armour.”

She took some of his luggage and walked toward a car he did not see before. The car was grey and extremely old. She opened the door and put the luggage in the backseat. 

Viktor sat down next to her on the front seat of the car. It felt weird to be sitting on the left side of the car and not be driving. She started her car that made strange noise before finally starting.

“This car is basically as old as I am. I would buy a new one, but I save my money to go back home for Christmas.”

They drove in comfortable silence. Viktor was not used to feel some comfortable with someone he literally just met, but Abby was a refreshing person. She put some music and started singing slightly off key. They drove for fifteen minutes before she stopped the car in front of a scary looking building.

“Yeah I know,” she said when she saw the look Viktor gave to the building. “It pretty old and rundown. But it is the apartment they gave me when I came two years ago and honestly I don’t care where I live as long as I have a roof over my head and there are not insects.”  
They were getting out of a car when a scary old man came to talk to them in Japanese. Viktor was surprised when she replied in the same language. Her Japanese was clearly not as fluent as the man, but she seemed to understand what was happening, which was more than Viktor could say about himself.

The man was pointing at him and said something that made Abby blushed and shake her head. He searched for something in his bag and gave it to Abby who bowed before turning back to Viktor.

“What was he saying?”

“Oh!” she said blushing once again, “He is the principal from one of the schools where I work. He is also my landlord. He asked me if you were my boyfriend who is visiting from Canada. For him, a girl and a boy who are spending time together cannot just be friends, or in this case, have just met; they must be in a relationship. When I told him that you were my friend, he gave me the key of the next-door apartment for you to sleep into, and I quote ‘not dishonour ourselves and our families by sleeping in the same quarters’. Now that he saw you, the whole village will know before sunrise tomorrow.”

She turned on the lights on her cellphone and climbed up the stairs. “The hallway lights broke two or three months ago.” She said over her shoulder to Viktor who was following her. They walk together in the extremely dark hallway until she stopped in front of a door. She opened the door to the apartment and turn on the light.

While the exterior of the building was old and grey, the interior was quite comfortable. With only one room, it was small for Viktor’s taste, but she had clearly put a lot of thoughts on the decorations and that made it a real home. She turned on the heating in the room and gesture to Viktor to sit under the table that was strangely covered by a blanket. 

Viktor sat down and immediately relaxed in the nice warmth coming from under that table. “The kotatsu is the only thing that makes winter here in Kyushu tolerable,” she said sitting down next to him. “I know I’m Canadian, but I am used to be cold outside and warm inside and not cold all the time like here with no central heating.”

They continued to talk, finding multiple common points such as complaining about long plane rides and long winter. He talked about his plan to coach Yuuri Katsuki and how he became interested in after seeing him drunk at the banquet. Later she gave him a leftover of curry, which was delicious, but maybe that was only because Viktor was starving at that point.

Around ten in the evening, she took a mattress, which she called futon, from the closet and left the apartment. She came back a few times for blankets and a small heater that she unplugged from next to the bed.

“I know I should be a good host and give you the bed, but the sheet aren’t clean, so I installed everything in the next-door apartment. You should be comfortable until tomorrow morning.”

She left him in the dark apartment, but he did not have time to think of the weirdness of the situation as he fell asleep at the moment his head touched the pillow.

The next morning, the bright light from the window woke him up. Viktor was happy that even with the jet lag, he had managed to sleep through the night. He looked in his luggage to find his shower product and towel to take the first shower in more than 24h hours. He entered the bathroom and was surprised to see that the shower was directly on the titled floor, without a curtain or anything. He decided that he was too disgusting to wonder about bathroom architecture and turn on the water. However, nothing came out.

Viktor sat with despair on the floor for the second time in less than twelve hours when a soft knock on the door make him jump. Fast he put his sweat pants and shirt one and went to answer the door. It was Abby, with a cup of coffee in her hand.

“I thought you may need this,” she said giving him the coffee, “ I just realized that the water is cut in this apartment as no one is living here. So you should come back to my apartment to take a shower and breakfast before going on your way.” 

The bathroom was as small in her apartment as it had been in his temporary one, but the shower was one of the best he had ever taken. When he came out, a delicious breakfast was on the table. They ate together and it was finally time to go.

Like the day before, they put Viktor’s luggage in the car and they drove off the island. 

Viktor had expected her to drive him back to the bus station, well station was a euphemism as it was nothing more than a bus shelter with a ticket machine, but she drove past it. Before Viktor could say anything, she said cheekily “as you came here instead of Hasestu which is not even in the same prefecture, I’ll go to the city with you. Anyway, it is Sunday and I have nothing better to do.”

Viktor did not know what he was expecting, but he had clearly not expected the road to the city to be more than two hours. She parked next to the bus station and went with him to buy the ticket.

Ticket in hand, they went to wait for the bus. Right before it was time to embark, she went to talk to the driver. When she came back she explained, “I told the driver you were going to Hasestu. He will tell you when to get out. Anyway, you'll most likely be the only foreigner in the bus, so he won’t make a mistake or forget about you. And please take a taxi when you’re in Hasetsu. The local bus system is pretty hard to understand.”

Viktor hugged her. In less than twelve hours, she had helped him more time than it would be possible to count.

“Oh right. Here is my number. Please call me or text me when you arrive. If you don't I’ll worry.”

He hugged her again and climbed into the bus. He waved at her until the bus left the station.

.o0o.

During the entire story, Yuuri listened to Viktor, often laughing. It had never occurred to him that Japan could be a baffling place to navigate, but without the knowledge of the language or geography it is clear that it could be confusing.

“Have you talked to her since?” asked Yuuri.

“Yes. We facetime once in a while. She is quite funny. She often tells me stories that happen in her class. I know this year she won’t be able to go home for Christmas and that made her sad. So, as you family basically adopted me… do you think have the place for an extra foreigner? One that at least speaks a bit of Japanese?”

“Of course. If she is your friend, she must be really nice.”

They called her that night and Yuuri was really moved when at the news of being invited for Christmas some tears of happiness were seen in her eyes.


End file.
